


Deadname

by DetournementArc



Category: Original Work
Genre: Superheroes, Trans Character, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:15:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25451497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetournementArc/pseuds/DetournementArc





	Deadname

There is a desire to be  
something delicate, something with a capacity for loving,  
a shape that can be held.

I have always felt like gnashing teeth,  
twisted bones, coiling claws.  
Throbbing like a walking wound.

They say they are called "deadnames"  
not because they are dead, but because  
they are written on your headstone when you die.

they never recovered my body,  
never found the body branded by that name.  
The grave that shares the name is an empty memorial.  
Let the name belong to the soil.

In the mirror, I see a hulking thing that stalks over the city,  
but I always did.  
The pulpy coils of writhing musculature, tensile and bulging  
the pure white eyes, the deep violet skin.  
These are new.  
The feelings are not.

I don't know if hormones will change  
whatever the chemicals made me  
on the day of the Accident.  
No idea what Top or Bottom Surgery means  
if your body isn't human anymore.

But nobody can touch what I've become.  
No one will hurt the people of this city  
raised to be prey in the slum abattoirs  
by the shepherds of poverty and violence.

I descend, a cloaked thing.  
Whether what I deal out is justice  
is contentious, at best.  
I do not know whether the carnage  
I unleash can be called righteous.  
But it feels good.

No girl will ever be trafficked,  
no drugged-out homeless person ever vanished by the cops,  
no trans person murdered.  
With these claws, I can carve out the tumors  
smothering the innocent souls of this world.  
A Sin-Eater with a thousand mouths.  
They all look upon me with eyes full of terror,  
and I feel like an inscrutable God.  
And I look upon myself with eyes full of terror.

I am still not myself.  
I escaped one wrong body into another.  
Lost one name for another.  
The news calls me the Prowler, The Lesion,  
I have so many names.

I would prefer the name, June.

But without this thing, this rage  
that wakes me up into every evening nightmare,  
how can I fight?  
Who can prune the rot out of the world?

I hide behind bared fangs and bulletproof skin  
like I hid behind a beard and men's clothes and a deep voice.  
Playing the role assigned to the flesh that carried me.

The old name is dead.  
June struggles to be born.  
But now,  
is the Time of Monsters.


End file.
